Concrete by Thomas Bernhard Read Free Book Online

Ruspoli, who died of kidney failure. She had met him in Rome and had corresponded and gone to parties with him for years, maintaining that she was a relative of his. When I asked her whether she was going to Italy to see the palace when the restoration was finished she said quite baldly no, she wasn’t interested. She really had no time for old buildings — for old people yes, she said contemptuously, but not for old buildings. I have to put myself in good standing with the church, my little brother, she said. I found this whole procedure and what she had to say about it highly distasteful. But she’s like that. She’s always turning up with some twit or other who wears shoes made by Nagy, what is more with metal tips which give them a revolting, unnatural gait, claiming that these people are relatives of hers, and consequently of mine. I have no relatives, I always tell her. I have only intellectual kin. The dead philosophers are my relatives. She always responds to this with her sly smile. But you can’t go to bed with philosophy, my little brother, she would often say, to which I would reply, just as often, Of course I can, and at least I don’t defile myself by doing so. This remark of mine once led her to announce, at a party in Miirzzuschlag to which she had dragged me after hours of nonstop nagging, My little brother sleeps with Schopenhauer. He alternates between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. With this she scored the expected success, as always at my expense. All my life I have admired the ease with which my sister is able to conduct a conversation. Even now — in fact to an even greater extent now — she surmounts the most difficult social obstacles with supreme ease — if indeed such social obstacles exist for her at all.
    Where she gets this talent from I don’t know, since our father had no interest whatever in society, and our mother disliked all the social to-do, as she called it. My sister’s business sense, which is her most distinctive trait, though no one would suspect it without knowing her as well as I do, comes from our paternal grandfather. It was he who made the family fortune, in the most curious circumstances, but at all events, however he did it, he made so much money that my sister and I, the third generation, still have enough for our existence, and all in all neither of us leads the most modest existence. For even though I live alone in Peiskam, I spend more money each month than other people who have large families. Who, for instance, heats more than nine rooms — not small rooms either — all through the winter just for himself? In fact, even though I am the most incompetent person in all so-called money matters, I could live for another twenty years without having to earn a penny, and then I could still sell off one parcel of land after another without seriously impairing the estate and thus lowering its value, but that won’t be necessary, and it’s absurd to contemplate it in view of the fact that I have only a very short time left to live, thanks to the incessant and inexorable progress of my.illness. I give myself one or two years at the most, by which time my need for life or existence or anything else this world has to offer will probably be exhausted. If I wished, I might describe myself as affluent, unlike my sister, who is really rich, for what one sees of her wealth is far from being the whole. In one point, however, which I have already mentioned, I differ markedly from her: she donates millions to the church and other such dubious institutions for the good of her soul and for her own private amusement, whereas I donate nothing and would never dream of donating anything in a world which is choking on its billions, yet prates about charity at the drop of a hat. I haven’t the least desire to amuse myself for weeks on end by giving to charity, nor have I the capacity to derive pleasure from newspaper accounts of my generosity and love of my neighbour, because I believe